


Lab Nine

by thelma_throwaway



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Horror, Post-Academy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23296735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelma_throwaway/pseuds/thelma_throwaway
Summary: He’s picked over every gloomy wreck and lean-to ghost town from Beaumonde to Bellerophon but this is by far the most creepifying scene he’s ever walked into.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Lab Nine

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING: strong language, gore, implied violence, implied medical torture, implied neglect/abuse of a minor, author's first attempt at horror

_ The path to paradise begins in hell. _

_ -Dante Alighieri _

_ Abandon hope all ye who enter here. _

_ \--also Dante Alighieri  _

* * *

He’s picked over every gloomy wreck and lean-to ghost town from Beaumonde to Bellerophon but this is by far the most creepifying scene he’s ever walked into. 

The campus is half-burnt and crumbling, a trail of bent metal and cracked cement leading out the front gate and towards the abandoned town just a mile down the road. It was once a well-kept little oasis in the dense woods of Osiris, peopled mostly by the school’s staff and their household help. He had driven through it on his way in and it bore the look of a place that had been left in a hurry--- front doors flung open still slapping in the wind, burst suitcases and busted furniture disintegrating on lush lawns, a holo-ad for Blue Sun brand baby formula glitching endlessly outside the general store. He didn’t linger too long or take much note at the time. The ‘verse was full of slapdash escapes. 

The academy’s name is obscured at its entrance by a mass of bloody hand prints. A crumpled heap that may have once been a man has propped the heavy iron gate ajar. Jayne’s not a spiritual man, but even he can sense the dark miasma of evil that hangs like a fog over the whole complex. He can’t shake the feeling he’s descending some depth he may not be able to crawl out of. 

He snorts grimly and grabs the comm at his shoulder. “I’m here. Place looks like hell and highwater spent the night ruttin’ on it.”

After a moment it crackles back. “What?”

“It’s creepy as fuck, Virgil,” he snarls back. “My goosebumps got goosebumps. What am I even lookin’ for?”

“A safe, ‘bought the size of a milk crate. All black with a Blue Sun logo etched on the bottom. Should be in Lab 9, or what's left of it-- I done sent you the ‘specs already, Cobb. Why you so tetchy?”   
  


“You ain’t lookin’ at what I’m lookin’ at.” Two almondine lobes in Jayne’s brain are pumping tingling warning shots to every nerve in his body. Not much turns his stomach but what he’s seen so far has brought a feverish sweat to his neck and hands. “What did yer fella say happened to them all?”   
  
“Wasn’t Reavers.” Virgil knows his man-- if Jayne smells Reavers there isn’t a pile of gold high enough to get him to follow through on the job. “Hinky gas line, whole buildin’ collapsed one night.”

“Hmph.” Jayne doesn’t bother to put that through the comm. He cracks his neck, flexes his fingers and toes, and with a final shiver hops out of the skimmer and onto the uneven pavement. Teeth grinding, he grips the comm and snarls, “One hour-- if I don’t find it I’m out, if I don’t call back I’m dead.”

“Roger that.” 

The scene inside the gate is no more comforting. A clogged, putrid fountain, the marble figure perched at its center maimed beyond recognition, flanked by two identical buildings to the left and right, the dormitories and arts building according to their signs. The main building is marked by a once elegant glass rotunda, but now the two-story windows are smashed and gaping in a permanent scream. Wet papers, leaves, and animal excrement carpet the lobby, a trail of smeared red hand prints traveling up the bannister and the once white wall leading to the second floor. He pulls out his rickety cortex and checks the blueprint Virgil sent him. Up those stairs would have been the headmaster’s office. The glass wall facing out into the reception area is streaked black and red, spiderwebbed with cracks that would suggest a skull being smashed repeatedly against it. 

“ _ SKREEEEEE!!” _

A possum skitters out from under a damp pile of who knows what and hisses at Jayne as it disappears through one of the shattered windows. Her back is lined with babies, who cling and screech as she runs. 

“ _ Ta ma de _ ,” Jayne groans clutching his heart. He can admit that he’s properly spooked. Hasn’t been this scared since he was a boy. He knows fear is not the enemy as some would have you believe. Fear is a friend. Fear is the bartender that nods towards the back door when the front one’s been surrounded, the imperceptible wink of a turncoat just before he starts to shoot. Treated with proper respect, fear could save your life. And Jayne’s so afraid he’s starting to worry there’s something in these tumbledown halls that can smell it. 

He looks again at the blueprint and locates Lab 9. There was no use hemming and hawing--- either he’ll die today or he won’t. He draws his weapon and starts down a damp, tunneling hallway and deeper into the darkness. 

Three flights down, another door is propped open with what was once a man. He shines his chest lamp into the halls but turns quickly away when he recognizes the desiccated tableau. He’s starting to think Virgil was lying about the Reavers. There isn’t a gasline hinky enough to tear a person into four parts. But there’s no point turning back now, what was done was long done and the culprits long gone. 

The farther down he goes the worse the carnage. He stays to the concrete stairwell lit only by the LEDs sewn into his vest, but can see through windows into each darkened floor and strewn along the stairs the evidence of slaughter. The air on the 7th floor is so frightening and thick with foreboding he vaults down to the next landing to avoid the cracked door to Lab 7, something shifting in the inky blackness 

Nine levels down, the titanium door has been ripped from its hinges and thrown into a crumpled pile like it was a paper fan. He calms his breath, willing the hummingbird pace of his heart to slow, and checks the cortex one last time. If it was anywhere the safe would be here, 20 paces to the left in the lab manager’s office. Or what had been the office of what had been the lab manager. 

It’s dark as a tomb in Lab 9 but tropically hot. Jayne wipes his slick palms on his pants, feeling ahead with his feet. Halfway down the hall his foot squelches into something soft and putrid, releasing the gagging scent of decaying flesh that knocks the wind from him. Gulping spasmodically he almost misses the soft  _ ha! _ of something launching itself into the air. 

He feels the jab of a clawed fist into his kidney, his throat, his solar plexus, and gasping for breath he catches a thin, slippery wrist before it can land a chop to his groin and twists hard. The thing in the dark howls and slams the broadside of its foot into Jayne’s temple. In the dim glow of his vest lights he can see it's a small thing but each blow feels like it's been thrown by a grown man. A big one. 

The small thing in the dark snarls, pinwheeling hits to his face, his arms, his legs, and Jayne’s stuck like a boxer, fists in the air and two arms held like a shield in front of his head and throat. Its sharp nails catch on the flannel of his shirt and he hears the fabric rend. His muscles are sore from absorbing the blows and he understands that this isn’t some feral attack--- it has a strategy.

Jayne lets another barrage fall on his shoulders and stomach, then times a swift uppercut to connect with the little monster’s chin as it winds up for the next punch. He whiffs the air instead but undeterred, slams a knee into its trunk as it throws itself at him. It lets out a gurgling wail, dives, rolls behind him and jumps onto his back. 

“Fuck!” He whirls around, feeling its claws scrabble against his throat, hot stinking breath steaming his ear. He doesn’t trust there’s a wall to ram his attacker into, smells the blood leaking from the shallow cuts along his neck and he’s gasping for moldy air. He’s in its lair and it knows how to fight in the dark. 

In the dark.

Jayne hits the spotlight puck on his chest and the creature screams and stumbles back, huffing and crying, covering its head with its spindly arms to block out the sudden sun-brightness. With a shiver of rage he realizes it’s a girl-- a young girl, maybe 16, dirty and emaciated. Her nails are filthy and jagged, her hair matted, wearing the grimy scraps of a hospital gown. He swallows hard the sudden realization that this had never been a school at all.

“ _ Yeh su _ ,” he breaths. “How long you been here, girl?”

She snarls and launches at him again, but falls back mid-strike as she nears the light on his chest.

“That long, huh?” He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a wrapped chocolate “ ‘member this? Ever seen one a’ these? Ya poor beast.”

Her head perks up in recognition, nose snuffling the air. She draws up on her haunches, nodding slowly. “Y...yes.”

Holding the other hand up in the intergalactic sign of truce, he tosses her the candy. He points the light away from her as she carefully examines the foil. She sniffs it and pauses, eyes darting between Jayne and the candy.

  
“Ain’t poisoned, if that’s what yer worried about.” She seems to understand, shrugs and deftly unwraps the chocolate and presses it into her mouth. He swears he hears the barest echo of a moan escape her lips.

He reckons how long the facility's been broke down. She can’t have been there less than two years and who knows how long before that. He wonders if she’d survived the carnage evident on the floors above or had played some part in it. Waiflike appearance aside, she fought like an assassin in the dark and he shivers to think on the barrage of blows he’d taken, counting his lucky stars the only weapon she’d had were her ragged nails. If she’d had a knife he’d be quartered like a spring lamb right now. A stray thought passes into his mind and wanders back off into the dark,  _ and if she’d had a gun…..? _

Would it be better to put a bullet in her head, down here where no one would ever see? He can’t leave her here, but what’s he supposed to do with her above ground. Take her back to Virgil’s and clean her up, drop her at a convent and then take off for some other  _ go se _ wreck to pick clean. He knows from looking at her she’ll never be who she once was, who she could have been.

“D-- don’t.” He’s shaken from his thoughts by her strange, scraping voice. “D--on’t shoot.”

“How’d you--- What  _ are _ you, little girl?”

She stumbles to her feet, clutching the foil wrapper in one hand. “ Are… tam. Subject Alpha-Five-Oh-Three, Lab 9.”

“That don’t make no  _ gorram  _ sense.” Jayne feels an acidic mixture of bile and anger and pity rise in his throat. This day’s gone every type of wrong and he hasn’t even gotten the--- “ _ Wo cao _ ! The fuckin’ safe.” 

Just then his comm crackles, “Cobb-- you got--- been on---scarin’ me here, boy!”

“Ahhh, shit.” Jayne presses his radio. “There ain’t no signal down here. I ain’t never running a  _ feng le _ job like this again, ya heard me Virgil? Virgil!”

Without a sound the girl converges on him, and when he looks down he’s looking directly into the luminous brown eyes of Subject 503-Lab 9. “Virgil?”

“Yeah-- Virgil. ‘S my boss. Not fer long, I’m way too old for this shit.”

“You are the poet.” Her chapped lips crack into a grin and she clings like a burr to his vest. “Who climbed down nine hells. Help from Virgil. And you-- you can climb out.”

“Now I  _ really  _ got no gorram idea what yer talkin’ about.” He should have shot her. In the dark, before he’d seen her pathetic, scrawny form and those eyes. He doubts he’ll be able to forget either now. “But I sure as nine hells ain’t a poet. An’ I got a job ta finish.”

He disengages her grimy paws from his shirt front, takes a few strides down the hallway towards Lab 9 before he realizes she’s following behind him, the only clue her breathy mumbling as she trails him. 

“...two by two, greed and avarice, avarice and violence, two by two…”

“Hey--” He whirls around and catches her by the wrists. She’s counting something on her fingers, eight frail digits already raised.

“--- and the last of course.” She raises the ninth and begins to giggle. It's almost as creepifying as her howling out of the dark.

“I need your help.”

“A maw for each betrayer--- mommy, daddy, and ----” Her face crumples and she begins to sob. “ _ Meimei _ . She was  _ meimei _ .”

“Hey-- pull it together girl!” He gives her a shake, then decides that might not be the best course of action. It’s clear he’s got a live grenade here and who knows when it’s going off. “I need your help. Can you help me? Hey! Can you help me,  _ meimei _ ? Can’t do it without you.”

All at once the sobbing stops. She sniffles a little, rearranging the muscles in her face until her expression is clear and eager. “Yes. Of course. She’s the smart one, after all.”

“Well ya got me there,” he grunts, letting her wrists fall free but she steps closer, face upturned in anticipation, raised fingers held tightly against her chest. “You recall a safe? Bout yay big, with the Blue Sun logo?”

She winces. “It was destroyed.”

“By who?”

She smirks, exposing the tips of her canines as her lashes brush down her cheeks and back up again, and for a moment he sees beneath the filth and stink and babbling a haughty, clever young woman. “Me.” 

He moans. All this for absolutely  _ gorram _ nothing. Even if she’s lying about trashing the safe, his patience for this job is up. Virgil can come back down hisself if he wants, do battle with Alpha Four Oh Nine or whoever else might be lurking. “Now why’dya do that?”

“Evil inside. Couldn't let them lift the lid again.”

As a general rule of his profession Jayne does not ask these types of questions but through the bubbling thickness of his falling adrenaline and the hothouse air he hears himself say, “What was in that safe.”

“Pax.” She points upward, at the eight floors of carnage above them, the two other buildings he’s sure are just bloodied, the ghostly town with its rotting luggage and every house streaked with red-brown stains and now he knows why. “That.”

“They--- they made that?”

“Supposed to be a test. Just a sprinkle. Student body liked the taste.” He’s lost the thread again but now her lip is trembling once more and he pats her shoulders though he doesn’t quite know why. His experience with women has always been that a few pieces of gold can stop just about any emotional display, but he’s used to dealing with a very specific subset of the population. This wild little thing would probably try to eat the coin. “Roared and broke their cages and then they-- they ripped--” 

“Hush.” He’s heard about all he can stomach. “I know what they did.”

“Held her breath,” she offers. “Fought them off. Hid. But-- the screaming found her.”

“Always does.” He peers down at her in the dim glow of his vest lights, feeling as miserable as she looks. 

“Will you kill her?” She speaks his thought before he can think it.

“Think it’d be a mercy,” he says frankly. “Though I imagine ya got an opinion on the matter.”

“She’d like to try--- above. If she’s bad you can shoot her.” She puts together the sentence painstakingly and Jayne regrets that he’d thought to make himself judge and jury. She points to the center of her forehead. “Cleanly, please. Not from behind like an old dog.”

“ ‘nough of that crazy talk, it's makin’ my skin crawl.”

Together they pick their way back up the stairs. Jayne has her walk in front, his chest lamp illuminating the cracked, dirty soles of her feet. She chitters away, like she’s talking to someone who isn’t there but understands her perfectly. 

The girl is just as weary of the cracked door of the Lab 7, goes silent and gestures furtively, draws a finger across her throat and points again. He nods and hoists himself up by the railings to avoid the door. At the top he turns to help her up and over but finds her already standing on the landing to Lab 6, a wild grin on her face but breathing evenly against his ragged, labored huffing. 

Her bare feet squelch along the leaflitter carpet on the ground floor and she hisses against the sunlight ahead of them. They stop as her eyes adjust and a rat ambles by. She snatches it hungrily, holding the writhing squeaking thing tight but seeing Jayne’s expression, lets it drop from her hands. She shrugs sheepishly and they go on.

In the lobby they stop again and she stares in wonder at the bloodied glass, the stray bones, the papers wet beyond recognition. He can’t know but has an inkling this is the first time she’s stood here since she first descended to Lab 9. 

He wonders if the  _ feng le _ little creature is capable of sentimentality. He sure isn’t but has seen it in the fairer sex from time to time. She answers his question when she takes a last look at the headmaster’s office, gives a single croaking, triumphant laugh and spits.

The skimmer is right where he left it, sunning itself on the other side of the iron gate. 

“You uhhh, you got any affects you’d like to gather, Subject 503-Lab 9?”

She quirks a brow and shakes her head, her tattered hospital gown blowing in a soft summer wind. She pulls what’s left of the ragged tie at the nape of her neck and lets it drop away. He turns his head, acutely aware of the mottled bruising he’s added to the painfully defined outline of her ribs, the barcode tattoed along the jut of her hip. He sheds his tactical vest and gives her his flannel. It hangs to her knees and she clutches it close to her as she steps tentatively towards the front gate. She whips around one last time, face knit in fear as if someone is going to stop her, call out and haul her back.

“It’s done.You ain’t never gotta come back if you don’t want.”

She nods and steps over the mound-that-was-a-man holding the gate open without another glance.

He loads her into the skimmer and tends to the scratches on his neck and arms. “You’re a right little hellcat, I’ll give you that.”

There’s a smoother in the med kit and he considers feeding it to her like it was another chocolate. Without looking at him she gives a little squeak. “Promised to---”

“Yeah, yeah.” He snaps the case shut and swings himself into the driver’s seat. He’s sure if she hauls off and bites his neck open while he drives, they’ll both get what they deserved. But before he even turns the ignition, she’s curled up in the seat next to him and sleeping like a kitten.

He sighs, leans his head back against the lumpy rest and lets the sun bake off the last sweaty tendrils of fear from his being. He lets his mind trace the gawdawful contours of the day, skipping lightly over little facts he doesn’t care to stitch together. The crumpled titanium door, the thing lurking in Lab 7, the hungry look on the girl’s face when her eyes lit upon the rat in the hallway. He doesn’t work too hard to understand what the so-called academy and its utter destruction might mean. Took no convincing for him to believe the dirtiest crimes were pulled off by the richest of men.

He considers the sleeping girl, the burnt husk of the school, the rubble strewn road stretching to the ghostly little town and the untouched pavement leading in the other direction. He lost the straight and narrow path long ago, though he was lucky enough to have stumbled now and again through the gnarled wilderness into oases and enchanted thickets and all types of shiny, unexpected situations. 

Though the shine of this predicament has yet to reveal itself. He’s got a feral, underage waif and not a copper to show for the day's work. He thinks on what his mother would say. 

“Feed ‘er, cloth ‘er. Give ‘er a name.” Patience Cobb admonishes in his ear, “And fer the love of Buddha Jayne--- make her  _ wash _ .” 

“ _ Ai ya tien ah _ ,” he mutters, knowing she’s right. He grips the comm on his vest and, minding the slumbering animal in his passenger seat, barks softly, “Virgil!”

“Yes, Cobb?”

He works his jaw in thought. “Ain’t comin’ back.”

“Figured so--- keep the skimmer, with my regards.”


End file.
